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Portrait of Anne Vallayer-Coster
François Dumont (French, 1751–1831)
1804
- Medium
- watercolor on ivory in a gilt metal and enamel frame
- Classification
- Portrait Miniature
- Dimensions
- Diameter: 7.6 cm (3 in.); Diameter of frame: 10.2 cm (4 in.)
- Culture
- France, 19th century
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Modern European Painting and Sculpture
- Credit line
- The Edward B. Greene Collection
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed
View at the Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
Born in 1744, Anne Vallayer-Coster was a prominent still-life painter in France during the 1770s and 1780s. The daughter of a goldsmith, she grew up observing the intricacies of metalwork, acquiring an attention to detail apparent in her paintings. She was apprenticed to the seascape painter Joseph Vernet who encouraged her to pursue painting as a profession. In 1770 Vallayer-Coster sought membership in the exclusive French Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture with the submission of two still-life paintings, "The Attributes of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture" and "The Attributes of Music." She was accepted with full rights and privileges to the overwhelmingly male academy-the only woman to be granted membership during this period independent of royal support or ties to a male academician. Denis Diderot, a French art critic and philosopher, responded to her submissions: "It is certain that if all new members made a showing like Mademoiselle Vallayer's, and sustained the same high level of quality there, the Salon would look very different!" Since women were officially barred during the 18th century from studying the male nude from life, still-life painting was among…
